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Web Services

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post a question regarding web services...forgive me if not.

I've been in web development for a while now and have heard a lot of discussion about web services. I understand that a web service is pretty much a web-based API--the client submits a request, and the server submits a response. Great. I've been doing that for years now. If I have a database with data, I create a PHP script that will serve as an interface to that data. I submit a request to the PHP script, and it returns my data in an XML format that I can then parse, display, or whatever.

What I would like to know is what makes a web service different from that PHP script that serves as an interface to my database. Is it a simple web service? If not, why not? How do WSDL and SOAP fit in to all this?

I'm not sure if this is the right place to post a question regarding web services...forgive me if not.

I've been in web development for a while now and have heard a lot of discussion about web services. I understand that a web service is pretty much a web-based API--the client submits a request, and the server submits a response. Great. I've been doing that for years now. If I have a database with data, I create a PHP script that will serve as an interface to that data. I submit a request to the PHP script, and it returns my data in an XML format that I can then parse, display, or whatever.

What I would like to know is what makes a web service different from that PHP script that serves as an interface to my database. Is it a simple web service? If not, why not? How do WSDL and SOAP fit in to all this?

wdsl is the language used to describe what your service offer, what client are looking for and so on.
soap is the communication protocol between client and server, to find what your service offer, what you need and so on.
I hope I didn't mess it, I try to explain it simple, but are more w3c recommandation involved here,
usualy a google search for "term site:w3.org" adding "primer" give some usefull links, same for xml.com

implementing this in php, perl, erlang or what ever you want is a matter of choice,